


Going Home

by glimmerglanger



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Post-X-Men: Dark Phoenix (Movie), Prompt: isolation, Psychological Trauma, Telepathy, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 21:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20936753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: Charles wondered if Erik would come back. Surely, this strange, lingering time they spent together would have to end, sooner or later. Erik would get tired of asking for his company, run off, be gone again, for years or decades or forever.Charles frowned, hands balling up into fists as he turned, intending to call Erik back, changing his mind, and it was then that something sharp pricked against the side of his neck, and, before he could cry out in alarm, the darkness took him.-Whumptober 2019 fic for prompt #7 (isolation)





	Going Home

The second time Erik asked Charles to come away with him, offering the inside of his thoughts to prove that he meant no harm, he said, “Let’s go home, Charles, please.”

Charles refused him that time, as well, turning down the haunting temptation of slipping into his mind. They were sitting on an open lawn, overlooking a great mass of humanity that was going about their business in the world. Charles had been wondering how many of them were mutants, how many would find their way to the school, how many he might have been able to help, once.

Erik had sighed, but not pressed the issue, stretching out across a blanket on the grass, fiddling with a clover he’d plucked from the field. The sunlight picked out hints of red and white in his hair, grown so shaggy of late. The movement of his hands grew attention to the scars over his knuckles, down his forearms.

“Charles,” he said, sounding bemused and a bit impatient, all at once, as though it were not the first time he’d asked.

“Hm?” Charles asked, realizing he’d given up watching the crowd in order to pay attention to closer considerations.

Erik grinned at him; Charles still hadn’t gotten used to the ease and frequency of that expression, to whatever change had made Erik decide, all at once, that Charles was someone he was going to smile at all the time. Someone he was going to spend his days around, whiling away the hours, doing little of anything of importance for… perhaps the first time in the last three decades.

“I asked if you wanted a gelato,” Erik said, standing to brush himself off. “I’m going to get one.”

“No,” Charles said, more out a reflex to refuse than anything else.

Erik shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, picking his way off across the grass. Charles wondered if he would come back, vaguely. Surely, this strange, lingering time they spent together would have to end, sooner or later.

Erik would get tired of asking for his company, run off, be gone again, for years or decades or forever.

Charles frowned, hands balling up into fists as he turned, intending to call Erik back, changing his mind, and it was then that something sharp pricked against the side of his neck, and, before he could cry out in alarm, the darkness took him.

#

Charles blinked his eyes open to find a white expanse of nothing overhead. His head hurt horribly. The world was spinning, or he thought it was. It was difficult to be certain because, when he grunted and shifted around, he found himself surrounded by white walls, a white ceiling, a white floor.

Cold emanated from the floor, through his thin summer clothing, but he barely felt it. There were more pressing concerns making themselves known.

Nausea climbed up the back of his throat, spurred by the headache beating away at his temples. He recognized it, the unique aspect of the agony building inside of his head, the pain brought by the terrible, ringing silence within his mind.

He could not sense anyone else’s thoughts.

Not a single mind brushed his.

It was--horrible. It came with the bone-deep knowledge that he was the only person in the world still alive. How could he not be? He _always_ felt the minds of others, even blocking out their thoughts, they were a constant presence, proof that the world still turned, that he was not alone, that--

They were all gone, now.

He tried to swallow back the bile in his mouth and lost the battle, retching over the white floor as the quiet pressed into him, closer and closer and closer.

#

“Hello!” Charles called, when he felt like he could. He’d dragged himself away from his pile of sick, into the far corner of the white room. There were no cameras he could see. No doors. No windows. Nothing but while, as though the entire world had shrunk to this six by six room

“I don’t know why you’ve taken me,” he yelled, because surely someone was listening. Why would they take him away and lock him up without even questioning him? “But I’d be happy to discuss the issue.”

No one answered him. 

Nothing in the room changed at all. The quiet inside his head ate away at him, nibbling bites growing bigger with each second.

#

No one came. Sometimes he slept; a terrible, dreamless sleep that left him jerking awake, breathing hard, reaching out desperately to a mind, _any_ mind, and finding nothing.

The second time he woke up, there was food and water in the middle of the room. He did not know how it had gotten there. 

“Please,” he said, sipping at the water, not sure he could keep down the food, “can you please tell me why you’ve brought me here?”

No-one answered.

He was beginning to believe there was no one around _to_ answer.

#

When Charles had been young, before he met Raven, even, he had been plagued by nightmares where his dream self realized that all the people around him were merely puppets, suits of flesh that operated because he wished it to be so.

In the dreams, he’d forgotten how to maintain that wish, and they’d all collapsed, like dolls with their strings cut, laying limp across the ground as he tried to remember how to animate them once more.

Eventually, in the dreams, they would all disappear, fading away as he forgot how to maintain their forms. He would be alone, in an empty world, with no thoughts to batter at his mental defenses, with no one around, utterly and completely abandoned.

He’d always awoken from them screaming, panic closing its cruel fingers around his throat and squeezing for all it was worth. 

#

The dreams came back. But when Charles woke, panting, unable to catch his breath, there were no minds down the hall to touch, no disinterest emanating from his mother, no hatred from his step-father, _nothing_.

He curled his hands up around his head, straining his mind, trying to touch someone, _anyone_, to prove that he was not all alone in the entirely of the universe.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t, there was nothing in the world but this room, these white walls, the silence, and he screamed into it, screamed himself hoarse, screamed until no more sounds would come out of his throat, knowing no one was listening.

#

Sounds came back into the world slowly after his outburst, giving the universe some hint of definition, offering a lifeline that he was not alone, drifting and lost through the labyrinth of his mind. He heard - almost felt - an explosion, yet distant from the nowhere place they’d hidden him away. 

He thought he imagined it, at first. But other tremors came through the walls and the floor, where he’d curled into a corner. The faint retort of gunfire crept to him as he pushed up on one arm, staring at the blank walls, heart jumping in his chest.

He heard screams, muffled. 

And he knew, even before the ceiling above him pulled apart, lifted upward and torn to pieces by forces unseen, that it was Erik who had come for him. Charles had met time travelers, beings ancient enough to pass themselves off as gods, interstellar travelers, and the cosmic forces associated with creation itself in his life.

None of them had ever managed to infuriate everyone around them as much as Erik could.

None of them had ever bothered to come for him.

He raised an arm, hating the shake in it, to shield his head as pieces of concrete and wiring fell down around him, pouring into his little cell along with sunlight, the sounds of panic, and a figure, floating down feet-first, landing before him wearing ragged pants and a dirty shirt - the same clothing he’d been wearing when last Charles saw him.

“Charles,” Erik said, beard grown even more ramshackle than before, a wildness around his eyes as he strode forward, kneeling, reaching out to grab.

He was impossible. He had to be. A hallucination. Charles _knew_ it, he’d gone through this before, driven to it by the crushing silence inside his head, by the severing of his connection to the world.

And so, really, he could not be blamed for grabbing onto Erik, his impossible shoulders, for touching for his face, for fitting hand to cheek and _reaching_\--

Charles had avoided reading Erik’s mind. He’d had reasons for it, forgotten in his need to feel another mind, to know that this was real, that he was no longer shut up inside his own head, turning endlessly in on himself, like a mirror curved to reflect its own face until nothing else existed and it emptied of all purpose.

He’d been -- he’d been angry. He’d stayed out of Erik’s thoughts half out of spite. All those years Erik had shut him out, it had felt fair to refuse the invitation to enter when it was offered. 

He’d been afraid. Worried that a glimpse into Erik’s mind might show the edges of some plan, some scheme, some horror that would drive them apart. Worried that it _wouldn’t_. 

He’d been--

It didn’t really matter. He was none of those things in that moment, throwing himself forward, grasping at Erik’s thoughts like a drowning man grappling with an erstwhile rescuer. They said - someone said, he no longer remembered who - that half the time drowning victims killed their rescuers, thrashing around, dragging two people down.

Most weren’t as calm as Erik had been, all those years ago.

The thought jolted him forward, hurled him completely into Erik’s mind and _yes_, he was there, he was real. His thoughts swept past, ordered and reserved, the way they’d felt so long ago, all clean, crisp edges over riotous pain, grief, rage--

Those emotions all remained. They weren’t so well-hidden, anymore. They poked through, here and there, but the edges of them had worn away in the exposure. Charles slid past them, through them, touched by them and touching them, moving without purpose, wondering what Erik had expected him to see in there and--

And abruptly he saw it, pulled there by the question in his thoughts, translated across in that moment. He saw himself, dozens, hundreds, thousands of memories, all overlaid with the shades of emotions: anger, regret, confusion, and, oh.

Oh.

Want. So much want. Want such as Erik had only dared allow himself to feel a few times in his life and each time had snatched away, broken, destroyed by the world. He _wanted_, wanted Charles to come back with him, to play chess, to argue philosophy, to wake up beside him and go to sleep beside him in the night and--

And there was more, unfolding with liquid heat, slipping from Erik’s mind into his, jolting him back into his body. He gasped, blinking rapidly, still touching Erik’s cheek. 

Erik stared at him, head cocked to the side, hands on Charles’ shoulders, bracing and stabilizing. He asked, his voice rough, “Well?”

“Erik,” Charles choked, gripping at Erik, pulling him closer and down, needing to kiss his infuriating mouth. He slid fingers into Erik’s hair, shaggy now, long enough to snag at Charles’ knuckles as Erik made a little surprised sound against his mouth and kissed him back. Charles pulled back after only a moment, breathing hard, blinking back the stinging in his eyes. He said, into Erik’s victorious expression, “Take me home.”


End file.
